Man Heart
by CardboardCreative
Summary: Why did Turtle Heart stick around so long?  Melena had something to do with it, but then again, so did baby Elphaba.  A study of the green girl through Turtle Heart's eyes before he dies.  Dialogueless bookverse.  Oh, joy.


Disclaimer: **It's not mine, but if you insist… FINE! I'll take it, okay? I'll own Wicked if you just shut up about it already, gosh.**

Note: **I though it would be interesting to show Turtle Heart's interpretation of Elphaba before he died, of course, with ominous and strangely accurate predications for the future, with a teeny, teeny weeny Gelphie insertion that is teeny, teeny weeny. **

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A man can begin to feel obligated toward responsibilities that aren't his when he takes things that he doesn't own. Turtle Heart was a quiet man, and he never intended to entangle himself the way he had. In fact, he was merely searching for temporary rest to increase his travel speed, but when a woman welcomes you with her breasts bore out of her robes, well, a man can also be a weak creature.

Turtle Heart didn't consider himself weak, though at times he portrayed himself as exactly that. He always described himself as a thoughtful man, one who was intent of listening to accumulate knowledge and understand emotion. He sometimes found himself knee-deep in such emotion, however, with his eyes growing teary and his heart overwhelming with passion.

His father called him weak for such things, but Turtle Heart begged to differ. He knew his father didn't understand what it was to feel so deeply for things seemingly meaningless. His father was a hardened man, the Quadling lifestyle too stressful for any human of normalcy to avoid developing serious character flaws.

That's why Turtle Heart took up glass blowing: it was his personality and feeling compressed into an art form. It was delicate and required to be carried through with skill and accuracy, and it was certainly passionate. Every time Turtle Heart worked at a piece, he felt the organ in his chest flutter with delight at the colours and the shapes burning at his hands. The evergreen twirling, snaking around blotches of lightened ruby on a trinket glass heart caused Turtle Heart to think of an awkward dance, and why two colours would react that way.

It was for that reason why Turtle Heart took Melena as his lover: she was what he needed compressed into a broken, defeated body. Together, they made classic, beautiful music, both trying to escape the melancholy of their own creation.

Melena, of being bestowed with such a draining, dreadful family life of a bias, Minister husband, and her _abomination_ child. And Turtle Heart, of the constant neglect from his father, a as well as the other unmoving Quadling father figures, to which he would find solace in Frex at a later date, and from taking up a vocation that lacked any promise.

And then there was Elphaba. Tiny, treacherous Elphaba. If she didn't exist, Turtle Heart had every reason to believe that he would not have begun the entire affair. He would have ignored the fox of a woman who was called mother, and he would have progressed on his merry way to never touch the soul and essence of any person that side of Munchkinland.

For that, he wanted to thank her, and the Quadling believed in his heart of hearts that the little green thing would comprehend the words. The way she would sit quaintly in her pen, as if she didn't know she was the sight she was. The way she would sneer at her mother, mockingly, to rub in the fact that she was the sight she was. For all he knew, her mind contained an even cleverer intellect that was concealed until the time was ripe.

And Turtle Heart loved every moment of it. For a man who travelled the expanse of a third of a country, mingling with hoards people, he never found someone as animated as the green child. Her swift movements, her thoughtful faces, her razor-like teeth twisted into a horrible grin. Her sharp features weren't so haunting as they were charming to Turtle Heart, and it was surprising that a baby could be so… enchanting.

On days when he wasn't feeling especially lonely, he would much rather watch Elphaba play with blocks than share Melena's bed. He knew that his lover realized this before long, and it must have added to her contempt for the child, though Turtle Heart knew she loved Elphaba. She would never admit it, but Elphaba was more devoted to Melena as her child than Frex had ever been as her husband, or Turtle Heart would ever be as her lover.

Elphaba needed Melena more than anything else in the world, and Turtle Heart could only imagine the feeling of importance that must bestow on a human being.

The green girl was full of feeling, though she hid it with a creepy expertise. The key points to her animation were the ways she was capable of concealing her true self, and the ways where she completely let herself go. The Quadling liked to picture what she would be like as an adult, on the evenings where he would drift off with Melena's head on his shoulder, watching Elphaba roll around, playing her own games with, inevitably, the friends existing within her mind, still not a family but certainly feeling like one.

He saw her as insecure, despite it all. Outspoken, perhaps a mysterious lover, highly fashioned in society, but insecure. This would be borne from the lack of affection from her parents, and the inescapable rejection from peers early in life. Turtle Heart remembered his own childhood, anticipating she would be treated in the same fashion: beaten down verbally and flung around by the older boys when he cried or grew upset without much prompting. He knew this trait would be Elphaba's trademark, leading her to unsuspecting places in life, much like it was done for him.

He knew it would make her or break her.

And as little Elphaba would sit on his knee and watch his face with a wide, blank expression, eyes betraying her face by filling up with fire, Turtle Heart knew she would become something great.

And though he would let her play with the glass trinkets he made during his stay, he knew she would make messes that would call for more than just herself to clean up.

And even when she would cry in her high pitched whine, or her low, warning growl, he knew that she had already mastered the bottling of her true self.

Yes, Turtle Heart had high expectations of the girl, as though she were his own. And be she green, or be she yellow, white, or red, she was still a person - particularly unforgettable in the many aspects of complexion and personality.

When he fell to his knees, surrounded by darkness, the voices of his awkward family muffled by the blood rushing in his ears, Turtle Heart looked up at the green child, his last few breaths stacked up and uneven. His reddish skin tone was diluted by the blackness, and if he hadn't known better, he would have spotted her as grey.

She looked to be made of stone, watching him with a regally upturned chin. In that moment, he believed in the fables his father told, of moving statues as she gave him the slightest of nods, cordially (if it were her intention) as she sat in the lap of the beast.

_Turtle Heart is a glass blower, not a sculptor._

And that was the last thing he ever thought to himself.

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**That's right, there was no dialogue. And you just read it all. You would do me a great pleasure in reviewing what you thought. And, of course, you get to eat the obligatory cyber cookies.**


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